Court rules against police who shot suicidal youth

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A woman in northwest Oregon called police late one night in 2006, saying her son was drunk and out of control, breaking windows and threatening to kill himself with a pocket knife. Officers arrived and found 18-year-old Lukus Glenn in his driveway, talking to his parents and friends, and holding the knife against his neck.

Sheriff’s deputies ordered him to lie on the ground, and he complied but refused to drop the knife. Three minutes later, an officer arrived with a gun containing so-called “beanbag” rounds and fired six of them into Glenn’s body. As the youth rose and started to walk back toward the house, where his parents were standing, two officers fired their guns at him and killed him.

A federal judge found that the officers had used reasonable force, but on Friday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a lawsuit by Glenn’s parents against the Washington County deputies and said a jury should decide if they had overreacted.

Beanbag bullets, lead shot covered in cloth, are supposed to inflict pain rather than serious injury. But the court said they can cause grave injury or even death if they strike sensitive areas, and police are not entitled to use them against individuals who are threatening to kill themselves but pose no danger to anyone else.

In this case, the court said, Glenn was not threatening the officers, and a jury could determine whether he posed any risk to his family and friends, who stood nearby watching in horror.

Jurors could conclude “there was little evidence that he posed an immediate threat to anybody” when he was shot with the beanbag gun, the court said in a 3-0 ruling. They could also find that he was only trying to get away, and not endangering anyone but himself, when he rose and headed toward his house before the fatal shots.

The jury could also consider whether the officers had other options, the court said: They might have used a Taser, which is considered a less-harmful weapon and a more accurate one. Glenn’s mother said the 911 dispatcher had told her the officers would try to talk to her son. And a former police chief submitted a declaration saying the deputies had escalated the situation into “an unnecessary and avoidable shooting.”